The Orphans (Book 5): Civil War (7 page)

Chapter 5

The Others 2 months prior

Aslin and Clary walked towards the supply house. Clary said, “This is the last time that I’m dealing with these dumbasses. If they can’t figure out how things go then that’s it.”

Aslin shook his head no. “We’ve given the ultimatums and told them how things are here. If they aren't smart enough to figure it out, then they’re gone. Their stupidity and recklessness is going to get them, or one of us, hurt. They steal and they lie, and when you put those things together it leaves us unsafe. Now we see what they’re doing and if they’re stashing more shit then they’re gone. We can’t go back on what we said or we lose all respect and authority.”

Clary held up his hands in defeat, he understood but even as bad as the two were he still felt guilty about the idea of sticking them on the outside of the gates. Clary swung the door open and saw one man standing at the bottom of a shelf and the other was up on top of the rack pushing bullets, guns, and MRE’s into a dead space. Clary turned on the light, already with a pistol in his hand. He said, “Nice to see you, Joe, Doug. You boys don’t seem to learn things the hard way, do ya?”

They both shook their heads no. Joe spoke first, “Hey, this shit isn’t yours alright? You aren’t the owners of it either.”

Clary said, “Doug, you get down off that shelf before you break your neck.”

Aslin said, “Yeah, god forbid he makes our job easy.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Joe yelled.

Clary walked in gripping him by the back of the neck and pushing him out of the storage room. Doug tried to squeeze past Aslin but he gripped onto the back of his shirt pulling him back and then slamming him face first into the wall. Aslin said, “Oh my, I’m sorry about that, Doug. That didn’t hurt too badly did it, son?”

Doug wiped at a warm drip of blood making its way down his forehead and down to his nose. He said, “You guys are going to have people stand up to you eventually, do you know that?”

Aslin gripped him tighter and whispered, “We haven’t ever had a problem until the two of you came in with the last few groups. You two are too damn stupid to function. Guys like you make me wonder if we should keep looking for survivors. The more people that come here the more I think that we are inviting the stupid to live with us. You see everyone we have on this base has a reason to be here, they’ve lost someone, they’ve been hurt in some way, and the two of you just seem like you were out driving around living place to place and not trying to make a go of it.”

“I didn’t know there were rules to trying to survive this. Last time that I checked, they didn’t have no police, or army. Hell they ain’t got no government no more either. You tell me why this is so bad, what I’m doing. We need guns, and we need food. If we decided to leave, we’re going to need to have some supplies. No reason why we can’t take some of them from you,” Doug said.             

“We’re giving you a vehicle, and two rifles and two pistols and a box of MRE’s.” Aslin said. “Anything else you want besides that is going to have to be found. You guys are gone, not in a day, not in a week, not in a month.”

Joe got Clary’s hand off of him and took a few steps back. He held up his hands but not in a peaceful manner. Clary said, “You realize I could snap your fucking neck at any minute? The government that you don’t believe in any longer taught me how to do that efficiently. You don’t deserve to stay here, this place is for people that care about America, and about having one again one day.”

Joe came at Clary pulling a knife from behind his back. Clary said, “You don’t want to do it the easy way, huh?”

Joe flipped the knife around in his hand so that the butt was facing out and the blade was towards Clary. He motioned Clary forward with his other hand. Doug yelled from across the room. “Joe, we’re leaving and that’s it. You aren’t going to make anything better by doing this. Come on and let's get out of here, man.”

Joe shook his head no. “Are you kidding me? These guys think that they’re gods, I'm not going to just let them kick us out. I paid my taxes and I figure some of this shit is ours. These two aren’t around and we don’t got no problems anymore.”

Joe screamed running at Clary bringing the knife swiping it left and right across his abdomen. Clary jumped a foot back narrowly avoiding the blade. When Joe brought it back a third time Clary gripped his arm and pushed sending the both of them backwards and into a lunch table. He lifted him off his feet with his right hand keeping the knife hand pinned with his left. He slammed Joe down as hard as he could into the table.

There was a cracking noise beneath him and Clary could feel the table beginning to buckle. He lifted him one more time a few feet off the table this time with both hands and slammed him back down sending him through it and to the ground below. When Joe tried to push back up with knife in hand Clary brought a giant of a fist down into his face, knocking the man back into the mess of broken table and sending him to peaceful slumber.

Doug shook his head in disbelief at what was happening. He watched Clary waiting to see if Joe was done getting his beat down or if there would be more. When Joe did not try to get up Clary pulled him out of the wrecked table, taking his knife and patting him down to make sure that he didn’t have anything else on him.

When he found a baggie filled with pills stamped with smiley faces he put those in his pocket. He could hear the groan of Doug as he did this. Clary said, “You get a car today, and you leave. I’m not talking about a base truck either, there are plenty of civilian cars we’ve found with keys hidden under tires and left unlocked. You get this piece of shit, and the two of you leave. You don’t come back. I’ll be watching you until you are out of sight. The guards on duty will know to keep an eye out for you. Everyone knows who you are so do not try sneaking back onto this base or I promise you there will be crosshairs on your chest the next time that we meet.”

Doug was walking slowly hands away from his side to get Joe off the ground. “So where do you expect us to go?”

“To hell, but between now and then, I don’t care what you do. You just get the fuck off this base and stay off it.”

Doug said, “We aren’t going to make it, we aren’t clever people.”

Clary walked straight for him and dragged Joe by one hand, and gripped Doug by the back of the neck with everything he had. The man winced immediately ducking down and he forced him to walk out the door using his head to open it. When he made it out he saw there was a crowd. He looked to Patrick and Kya and said, “Patrick, I want two rifles, two pistols, and a can of ammo for each. Kya, run over to the motor pool and get something for these two to take. Make sure it isn’t anything that we are going to miss and I’m talking civilian not Humvees.”

She opened her mouth to say something not realizing how bad of a day Clary was having and he snapped, “Now, Kya, move!”

Doug, who for some reason still thought he had bargaining chips, pleaded, “Hey, we can change, we can do better. We just need one more chance, Clary, and we’ll turn around and make it to classes. We’re pretty good with shooting those rifles in training class.”

Clary said, “You two have made it to what, two classes so far out of twenty? I don’t know why the two of you are hoarding things that you probably don’t know how to use anyways. Don't beg, have a little respect for yourself.”

Doug turned around now knowing that he was gone and there was nothing that he could do about it. He said, “Aslin, really come on, there’s dead out there, fucking thousands of them. We aren’t going to make it, brother. Come on, are you going to let Clary make all the decisions for you?”

Aslin stepped forward ready to brawl. “Doug, you wouldn’t know this of course, but it was my idea to kick you out today. You guys are gone. Like he said, if you come back you’ll have crosshairs on you. But I promise you if it is my scope on you that you’ll never make it close enough to be a threat. You guys should leave now before you make it worse. We have no responsibilities saying we need to send you out of this place with anything. We could send you without any guns, hell, we could send you out walking. Would you feel good about that, or do you think that you’d much rather have a car?”

Doug thought about the two of them walking with no weapons and no car and the thought instantly made him sick. He walked towards the crowd who all took a step back. “You don’t have to live like this. You don’t have to be toy soldiers; you can kick these two out of here and we can make it a community, a safe place where everyone can just do what they want.”

Lou stepped out of the crowd and he was big enough that he didn’t have anything to worry about if the man wanted to rush him. “Before these guys came and got us, we didn’t know if we would make it to the next day. We lived in an apartment complex not more than a few miles from here, but from there to here seems like an entirely different world. I couldn’t be happier to have my girls learning how to use guns and having the supplies that they need. We didn’t know if there would be a tomorrow when we were there, each day we could hear the dead and we walked on pins and needles praying to god himself that they wouldn’t hear us and burst through the door and kill everyone. If you think that this is a prison then you must have had a very easy first year. I can only imagine that you’ve been screwing people over the entire time. Aslin and Clary ask for little in exchange for a safe haven. They could have stayed here with the kids they found on day two and done nothing. They would have had enough supplies to last them to the end, or damn close. Unfortunately for you, the government is no longer operating, at least in any way that I know of that affects us.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Doug asked.

“It means that welfare is over. If you can’t take care of yourself and contribute then it means you don’t have a right to survival. If you are a thief and a liar on top of that, then the other side of those gates is absolutely where I want you both.”

Doug looked at the rest of the bystanders and screamed, “Is that what all of you want? Huh, is it? You want us gone and you want to stay in this fucking regime?”

The heads of everyone were nodding yes and hadn’t taken long to do so. Doug turned around to say something else and Aslin was already standing there. He gripped his shoulder and brought up a right hook into the man's gut freeing him of any air in his lungs. Doug’s eyes crossed and he dropped to one knee holding his gut and trying to hold onto Aslin’s leg who brushed him off. Kya pulled up with a car and Aslin actually had to fight to keep a straight face. She got out pointing to it and said, “Sorry, it was the only one I could find keys for quickly. I didn’t think either of you would miss a Prius. Is this alright?”

Clary said, “It’s better than alright, it is perfect. Thanks, Kya.”

Patrick came through a minute later setting the items he’d been requested to get on the hood. Doug said, “Just one of each, why don’t you just put one in the back of our heads and save us the trouble?

Joe was pushing off the ground and could feel a pulsating in his head that he was going to be bothered by for a few days. “Shut up, Doug, take what they offer and we leave. It is obvious everyone else is just an ant here following the leader. Let them have the stupid base. I have a feeling it's going to fall at some point. Others are going to come for this stuff and when they don’t want to share they’re going to have more than just the dead that are coming for them.”

Clary said, “We don’t have any problems sharing, but so far we’ve went on five trips, and found three groups, one of which tried to take Fox. Sorry if we aren’t jumping up and down to give away a stockpile to insane people.”

Clary walked to the rifles releasing the bolt for the upper receiver and removing the charging handle from both rifles. He took the slide off each pistol and then popped the trunk throwing everything into the back of it.”

Doug saw this and yelled, “What are we supposed to do with broken guns? You want us to club those things to death?”

He shrugged closing the trunk and said “I tell you two what. You get at least a mile away from here before you stop and get this shit out of the trunk. You do anything before that distance, and I promise you I’ll be sitting with a grenade launcher ready to send hell straight towards you and dipshit.”

Joe shrugged climbing into the passenger seat. He said, “There aren’t many of those things around here, it's not a big deal. I really hope that we see each other again, Clary, Aslin.”

“Just remember you try coming back and it's going to go badly for you. I don’t care what assholes you end up with we aren’t putting up with any of it,”
Aslin said.

Doug wanted to say something but could tell from the body language and peoples looks that their stay was over. He climbed in starting the small car up and the two headed towards the gates. Clary walked alongside the car, rifle raised, until
they got to the gates. He made circles with his hand letting the two on duty know to let down the metal cylinders that came up and down from the ground. One of the two ran inside and the cylinders slowly began to lower. Clary knelt down and said, “I'm really not fucking around here, guys. If I have to make examples, I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure that people get the point. I honestly think that we’re getting rid of the cream of the crop when it comes to pieces of shit. Those left that aren’t trying right now are going to have a brand new motivation to keep them moving. You head out and you take a right, you get the fuck out of here and do it now.”